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To Boil Halibut

Boiled halibut served with horse-radish or parsley and egg sauce or melted butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Fish and horse work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 63 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

To Boil Halibut

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Place the halibut in a fish kettle with the back side down.

  2. Cover the fish with cold water.

  3. Dissolve the salt and saltpetre in the water.

Cook

  1. Bring the water to a boil and skim off any foam.

  2. Reduce heat and let the fish simmer until cooked, about 30 minutes for 4 pounds.

Serve

  1. Drain the fish and garnish with horse-radish or parsley.

  2. Serve with egg sauce or melted butter.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Fish + horsetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together63 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Fish + eggtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,782 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Horse + eggtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together96 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Hazelnut + eggtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together518 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Fish + hazelnuttop 35% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Halibut
Is the main protein; simmering cooks its flesh until it turns opaque and flakes.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the poaching water so the fish is flavoured through.

The step that matters

Reduce heat and simmer gently. A hard boil toughens and breaks up delicate fish flesh, so the water should only barely simmer while the fish cooks through.

Swap the hazelnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, horse, egg):

  1. Walnutfits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Peasfits better
  4. Hazelnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, horse, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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